Ramblings of a waterlogged Seattle area gardener and wannabe urban farmer

Forks Over Knives – A MUST SEE FILM

by myrubberboots on January 21, 2012

I finally watched Forks Over Knives last night (on Netflix Instant). Wow, what a eye opener. I don’t even know where to start.

I’ve been toying with the idea of cutting meat out of my diet for years now (ever since getting chickens). After watching the film and seeing actual data on what certain foods are doing to us, I’m even more convinced this is a path I need to go down.

Major eye openers for me:

On average Americans are 23lbs overweight (guilty)

40% of us are obese

50% are on a prescription medication

We’re sicker than ever

We mask our fatigue with sugar, coffee and energy drink (guilty)

The main cause of our health issues (other than watching TV, playing on the internet and playing video games) is our excessive consumption of convenience (processed) foods, sugars, and animal products. I’m guilty of all these things – well, except playing video games.

Even if you don’t want to totally cut animal products out of your diet, you should watch the film and have everyone in your family watch the film.

It talks about health conditions like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes and how we’ve seen an increase since we started eating more meat and processed foods — it’s just so convenient now.

They show comparisons in cancer levels between Americans and folks living in other countries where they don’t eat as much of these foods.

They go over real cases where people switched to a plant based diet and saw major health improvements – some folks were even able to get off their heart and diabetes medications.

Wow.

What are we doing to ourselves? What are we teaching the next generations? It reminds me of the movie WALL-E. It may be a cartoon but it seems to have a pretty good grasp into our future if we continue on our current path. This scares me.

Oh, I am right there with you. My husband and I have also been thinking about cutting meat out of our diets for the last couple of years. We’ve been better about trying to only support locally/humanely raised animals when we do eat meat, but still not as good as I’d like to be.

As an animal rescuer (and a former vegetarian – wha???) I have all sorts of issues about the whole meat “industry,” from the horrible treatment of animals, to the use of so much land to feed all these animals so that we can eat them, not to mention the health problems that are linked to eating so much meat and processed foods – especially here in America, where so many of us eat much more than our bodies actually want or require.

Somehow, meat, sugar, dairy, processed foods, and alcohol have all managed to make their way back into my life in a much larger way than I’d like.

I have never felt better than the times where I’ve cleansed or done a raw-food detox diet for a while, or really limited the amount of those “bad for me” food categories” mentioned above.

I’m hoping your post and this film will be the kick in the butt I need to start making some changes in what I’m eating and supporting. I love, love, love your first goal, about eating the way we did before grocery stores…that is such a great way to put it.

I love all of your goals and I’m going to try and make them mine once again too. It’s long overdue. Thanks for sharing this movie and your honest thoughts about it in this post!

Aimee, I just chatted with some friends about it on Friday and have had so many people recommend I watch the movie that I finally took the plunge. Along with the fact that I’ve always been sensitive to animals and could never harm one myself (even though I grew up on a farm), I’m just not sure we (society) need to be eating as much meat as we do today.

Fortunately for me, I LOVE vegetables. I just need to get creative in cooking them so I don’t get bored. Thanks for taking this journey along with me. I hope I can stick with it. I’ve got some doubters on my side since I’ve tried cutting meat of my diet before.